PS3 Tech Demo - Kara - How to Make an Android

Heavy Rain creators blew everyone away at this years Game Developers Conference with a tech-demo they have been working on called "Kara". If you haven't seen it yet, watch it here:

I don't think this could have come at a better time, with there being lots of online speculation on release dates for a Playstation 4 (PS4). This just goes to show that what Sony are saying about the PS3 not yet being maxed out is absolutely true.

The video is rendered in real-time on a PS3 using Quantic Dream's new rendering engine. It is nothing short of stunning. Who would have thought a few years ago that a games console in peoples homes would be capable of such realistic CGI.

David Cage (writer and director) from Quantic Dream has said that this video is purely a tech showcase and will not be the basis of a game. Hopefully we can see a game soon using this technology though, especially as another of their demo's called The Casting was used as a stepping stone to Heavy Rain.

Best of all the 7 minute featurette tells a story with quite an emotional feel. It's not just a demonstration of technical excellence but also of how computer generated imagery can be used to tell an emotive story - successfully. It isn't cold and expressionless like so many other real-time cut scenes or even pre-rendered sequences. It has feeling and envokes a response from the viewer.

Making Kara

Quanic Dreams have used their new innovative motion capture technology to grab full body motion, facial movements and voice recording all at once. Previously, most motion capture involved recording the whole body actions using one method and the facial animation and voice at a different time using another method. The movie Avatar took it a step further by captured the actors body movement using broad angle cameras and smaller cameras strapped to rigid frames on their heads to grab facial expressions. Quantic Dream's new technology does away with the invasive head cams and can grab all of the subtle facial muscle movements using the same room cameras which capture their body motion too. Stick the whole thing in a sound stage and you can record the whole performance including audio in one shot. For this they have a setup with 65 cameras surrounding the actors.

For a better visual explanation watch this 'Making-Of' video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSnFN8Ja58s

Over 100 actresses were auditioned for the role of Kara. They picked the amazing Valorie Curry in the end who did an incredible job.

'Kara' was actually created last year using v.1 of their own brand new PS3 engine. Apparently it now has 50% more features so future games should be visually very special and an even bigger leap forward. I can't wait.

Disney Universe - Oh My God, It's Full of Stars

They're Back! (PSN)

Finally the news we have all been waiting for - PSN is back up! (In Europe and the US anyway, other countries may have to wait a little longer). Update your firmware, set a new password and you'll be gaming like you've never been away.

I accidentally discovered the firmware update yesterday morning asking me to update to 3.61, slightly before the network came back up properly. It took another few hours before PSN would let me log in. I actually changed my password via the neat little Android PSN app which I can recommend. It told me about the required password change and pointed me off to the Web page. This then sent me an email with a unique URL in it valid for only 3 hours. I followed the URL, reset my password and 'hay Presto', I could log into PSN via my PS3 and Battlefield 1943 once again felt my destructive presence. From now on, you will only be able to change your password from the PS3 where the account was registered from, or your associated email account. Sony have put in place more firewalls and an early warning system to detect suspicious activity amongst other improvements.

A new email from Sony today is letting EU customers know about PSN coming online again and the new security measures. In addition, it also says:

"To thank you for your patience whilst PSN has been unavailable, we'll be rolling out a Welcome Back programme for all PSN users shortly; this will include free games to download and a month's free subsciption to PlayStation®Plus (or a free month for existing members). Once available, we'll publish a full list of Welcome Back offers in your country at eu.playstation.com/welcomeback"

More rumours have surfaced (via Bloomberg News) about the source of the attack against the Sony servers. It looks possible that it came from Amazon's EC2 cloud servers where someone had been allowed to open an account using fake credentials in order to launch the attack. Tut, tut, tut... naughty Amazon. This highlights how easy it is to sign up for online services without having to prove who you are. Not wanting to give your life story in order to open a Web based email account is one thing, but being able to hire a cloud of computing power using fake information is no joke. No doubt Amazon will be legally requested to hand over the access logs for the account in question so the investigation can be taken further.Hackers beware... the net is closing in!

News: PSN Hacked - Who is to Blame?

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past week you will have been aware that the PlayStation Network has been down (under maintenance). More information has finally been released by Sony, although its not the whole story - yet.

If you haven't received your email from Sony yet, or seen the message on another site or blog, here is a copy of the message sent out to all UK members:

In short, some attacker(s) found a vulnerability in the PSN network and managed to access a lot of personal details from potentially every PSN and Qriocity account in the world - 75 million of them in around 60 countries. This is bad. Currently they can't say whether credit card data was also available to them as they have not yet found any evidence it was, and I hope to goodness it wasn't. Why can't they say yet? Well, as someone who has dealt with network forensics a little in my time I can say it is incredibly time consuming to piece together all the information and build a picture of what happened after an event like this. Even on a relatively small system the logs created can be huge and stored across several systems, so I can't even imagine the size of the PSN logs. Hackers usually try to cover their tracks too by altering logs or filling them with bogus or irrelevant information to hide their real activity, making it much harder to see what they did. 'Freezing' the PSN system as soon as they detected the problem would have been a good idea.

There are plenty of people complaining about the data protection breach in online forums and blogs so I won't moan about it here, but I can say that it certainly isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened to an online store and definitely won't be the last. News reports just in the last month or so include...

• A few days ago, Rogelio Hackkett Jr. from Georgia USA pleaded guilty to using SQL vulnerabilities (database hacks) to obtain over 676,000 credit card numbers from different online companies. Worryingly, half of those were from one online ticket sales company which may not have even informed their customers of the breach! Credit card companies have traced more than $36 million in fraudulent transactions to those accounts.
• A couple of weeks ago several servers at WordPress (the blogging people) were hacked wide open potentially revealing account details of the 18 million publishers who use WordPress.
• In February a hacker got into a Nintendo 3DS promotional site and grabbed personal info (including email addresses) of thousands of Nintendo members. After failing to blackmail Nintendo they posted some of the details online and promptly got arrested by Spanish police.
• Also in February Yevgeny Anikin of Russia pleaded guilty to stealing $10 million from former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) company WorldPay back in 2008 by hacking into accounts there.
• In January the user details (possibly including PayPal account info - depending upon whose report you read) of 28 million members of the dating site PlentyOfFish were open to hackers. Passwords were apparently stored in plain text.
• The cosmetic group Lush were hacked and customer info including credit card details were stolen for orders between October 2010 and January 2011.
• In October 2010, Lin Mun Poo of Malaysia was arrested at JFK airport with a laptop containing 400,000 credit card, debit card and bank account details he had obtained after hacking into systems belonging to financial institutions, international banks, defence contractors, major corporations and FedComp (who look after several Federal Credit Union organisations). He traded and sold the information he obtained.
• Not long ago Epsilon who manage email campaigns for around 2500 world-wide companies such as Dell, Barclays Bank, BestBuy, CitiBank, Marks & Spencer, Ritz Carlton, Target, TiVo and Verizon had their data stolen. It didn't contain credit card or bank info but it did contain customer info and email addresses which could be used for huge scale phishing attacks. Epsilon send out 40 billion emails a year on behalf of their clients so you can imagine how many peoples details they hold.
• In December 2009 an SQL injection attack took place against the social network application maker RockYou.com in which 32 million login details were stolen, including those for users of Facebook and MySpace. Sadly (or stupidly) they apparently stored this information in plain text, i.e. unencrypted!
• According to the recently released Verizon/US Secret Service 2011 data breach investigations report, 50% of data breaches reported last year were from systems being hacked. 17% of data breaches were the result of privilege misuse (i.e. an insider accessing the data). 49% of data breaches involved malware (which is worrying!).
• And many more...

So who is to blame in the Sony case? Some are pointing the finger at Sony for having a vulnerable system. Without knowing how the hackers got in it is difficult to say. If Sony were lapse then they should take responsibility and perhaps offer compensation, but it may well be a third party system which was to blame (e.g. an SQL or Web server vulnerability) of which they were unaware. Of course it could be that the recent PS3 hacking information posted online was a key factor in people finding an exploit to the PSN network. This is why I get wound up when some online users complain that the system should be open and anyone should be able to hack it as much as they want. This would be yet another reason why that is a bad idea. Whatever blame you may put on Sony, nobody can deny that the thieving scum that broke into the system to steal the personal information of innocent gamers is definitely at fault. It's not even smart people most of the time who disrupt or break online systems. It is 'script kiddies' who download software written by someone else, without the knowledge or interest or brain capacity to know how it works but simply that it will cause annoyance to innocent users. And they think that bragging about it online gains respect or makes them look clever. No. Rant over.

Portal 2 Cover Released

EA have released the cover artwork for the much anticipated Portal 2 game for the PS3. It looks like Valve are taking the PS3 user base a lot more seriously these days.

After the rather insulting views on the PS3 a while ago from Gabe Newell (head of Valve) they have done a complete U-turn. He actually said the PS3 was "a waste of everybody's time"! Originally, I believe it was down to Valve not wanting to learn the brand new technology to get the best from the PS3. They were stuck in their 'PC world' and feared the work involved in brining their engine to the unfamiliar Playstation powerhouse. Since then it looks like they have spent more time with it as Gabe more recently said that the PS3 version of Portal 2 was the best console version available. Erik Johnson (project manager at Valve) also repaired some of the damage when he said that the Playstation 3 is "incredibly important to us" back at Gamescom 2010. He added, "We don't feel that the PS3 users had the Valve experience that we like to deliver".

Valve are bringing Steamworks to the PS3 which should help solve some of the problems they were heavily criticized for with the slated (and rushed) version of the 'Orange Box' that featured the original Portal game. This should include the ability for downloadable add-ons and updates, and possibly more Steam titles on the PS3 in the future. It was unable to get Steamworks on the Xbox 360.

Portal 2 has been named the most anticipated game of 2011 at the Spike TV Video Game Awards and will be released on 21st April 2011. We will get to visit new sections of Aperture Science Labs and reunite with GLaDOS the "occasionally murderous computer companion". There is a new co-operative mode with its own unique campaign and characters forcing players to coordinate and work together.

EA have struck the deal with Valve and will be distributing the retail versions of the game including those on the PS3. I loved the original Portal game on the PC which had the perfect balance of puzzles and action, and Portal 2 looks to be something rather special.